Actorviews (1923)

Arnold Daly’s Darling Daughter E WENT to supper after she had finished her night’s work, which was acting at the Playhouse the thirteenyear-old little Cockney dear in “HappyGo-Lucky” ; we went to supper just like a couple of grown-ups. But before I gave her an opportunity to decline my cigarets I asked one question. I asked, “How old are you, Miss Daly?” “I was nineteen on the fifth of December,” she said, “but you can make me eighteen if you want to — actresses are always made younger in their interviews, aren’t they ? But, of course, if anyone wanted to check up, the deception would be discovered. My mother is only thirty-seven — and divine; and as much of the world as cares to know knows that she married father when she was sixteen and that I was born in . . . whatever year it was . . . I’m trying my best to forget. ... Do you,” she leaned over the table and asked me above the racket of the world’s loudest organist, “know my divine mother?” “No, I’m sorry to say; but I do know all your sainted papas.” “All of them !” She laughed a little gurgling laugh that rippled her tomboyish features. “There’s only two. There’s Dad; he’s my step-father, Frank Craven. And there’s Father; he’s Arnold Daly, my parental progenitor. Mother and I always say we divorced Father in 1900 and married Dad in 1914.”